Monday, August 14, 2017

Request For Help Finding Richard "Dick" Bell in the Montreal Area: NOT SOLVED YET

I received this in email from Hendrik in South Africa:
My name is Hendrik and I'm from Robertson, a small town in South Africa. 
About 2 years ago, we found that my gran has brothers that we never knew about.  I was lucky enough to track down the family of the one deceased brother, and enjoy regular contact with them. 
However, I'm having the hardest time tracking down my gran's younger brother, who moved to Canada as a young man. 
My grandmother is 87 years old and her brother, Josef Pierre Richard Bell, known as Dick, will turn 85 years old on 16 August.  This imminent birthday breathed new life in my motivation to find him. Time is not on our side here! 
I'm asking for any assistance, nudges in the right direction, using your platform to share our plea for help, etc. 
I created a Facebook page to share what we know and what we've been able to find out so far: http://bit.ly/2uFQPbq


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The Facebook page lays out the known facts and the research already found to date for Richard "Dick" Bell.    You could respond to Henrik on the Facebook page, or in a Comment to this blog post and i'll forward it to him.

Is Richard Bell alive or dead?  If readers have resources for the Montreal, Quebec area, could they use them to search for a death record or a newspaper obituary or some other death record?  I don't know what contemporary records are available in Quebec.

If he is alive, then  there may be telephone books or people-finder resources in Montreal that readers know about.  There may be online message boards or Facebook pages/groups that Hendrik could post on.

Of course, he may not be in the Montreal area.  If he is single, he may be in a care facility or a senior housing unit.

UPDATE 15 August:  April King sent me this link and an obituary for Richard "Dick" Bell today -  http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/montrealgazette/obituary.aspx?pid=173018984.  Thank you, April for finding this and passing it along.  A Gold Star for April! 

UPDATE 2:  The link didn't work for me, so I passed April's email to Hendrik with the photo of Dick and the obituary image.  

UPDATE 3:  Hendrik doesn't think that the Richard Bell in the 2014 Montreal Gazette obituary is the right person.  The birth date doesn't match the known date and the marriage date is before the divorce from the first wife.  He is in contact with the son, adopted by them other's second husband, who is not mentioned in the obituary.  So the search is still ongoing.

Crowdsourcing works again!  Genealogy researchers are wonderful folks.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/08/request-for-help-finding-richard-dick.html

Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver


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